


One of These Days (Gonna Lose Control)

by coffeehousehaunt



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, For the prompt "burning down the world", Gen, Post-Cadmus, Red Lantern AU, Red Lantern!Kara, This seemed appropriate, spec fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-13
Updated: 2016-09-13
Packaged: 2018-08-14 18:50:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8025067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeehousehaunt/pseuds/coffeehousehaunt
Summary: "Kara Zor-El. You have great rage."
  

In which Kara thinks that Alex died while destroying Project Cadmus. 
For the Dare to Write prompt: "burning down the world"





	One of These Days (Gonna Lose Control)

**Author's Note:**

> Title is definitely from "Rage In Me", by KJ Sawka.

The first thing she’s aware of is the jostling, and it’s too much—everything is _motion_. Kara’s aware of the spasming in her throat, and a rush of voices:

“Shit.”

“She’s awake.”

“Kara.” 

There’s something in Hank’s voice that makes Kara’s eyes snap open, and even blurry and swaying from side to side with the motion of whatever vehicle they’re in, something about his face makes her stomach twist.

Beyond just the remnants of whatever drug Alex injected her with. This time, Kara manages to roll to the side before she vomits.

There’s a panic building in her gut as she blinks her eyes and looks around, something she can’t place until she realizes—it isn’t there. Something’s missing. Some _one_ ’s missing.

“Alex.” She says, and she’s not sure if it’s intelligible.

There’s a brief, shared look among the soldiers and escaped prisoners; a silence that’s all too familiar. Before there’s even words, before she’s even had time to process the significance, her heart rate triples and she pushes up.

Her arms give out, and she doesn’t see Alex’s face.

“Alex!”

“Kara,” Hank’s voice is low and soft and private in the confines of the cab, private like Eliza stepping out on her front porch to speak to the two men in their dark suits, shutting the door behind her. Private like no one else knows when _everyone_ else knows.

Private like twelve years in her dreams in a pod drifting through space; like Kal-El’s voice trying to explain to her twelve-year-old self a truth that even he can’t comprehend.

She doesn’t want to hear it.

She brushes his hand off her arm and sits up. Hank’s hand hits the inside panel of the vehicle hard enough to dent it. Her vision spins and greys dangerously, but she stays there, held upright by a rush of heat and lightning that has nothing to do with sunlight, runs deeper than blood.  

“ _No_.”

“Kara—“

“ _Where’s Alex._ ”

She goes still, waiting, every muscle in her body focused on Hank. She must still be depleted from her time underground, because he’s still sitting in front of her, and they’re still rattling on over the ground, carrying her away, always away, from the wound, from the one place that means anything.

Hank waits and watches for a moment longer, like he’s waiting for another outburst. When she doesn’t say anything further, he sighs and rubs his hand over his head. Kara’s gotten enough of her vision back to catch the shimmer in his eyes, and she swears she hears something crack, something roaring silently, and she watches his every motion like through a TV screen. This isn’t real.

“She stayed behind to hold off the guards and create a distraction for Jeremiah to set the charges,” He says, and even she can see how the words feel foreign to him. “She didn’t make it out before the rift closed.”

“No.” Kara says, and a hot wave of shame washed through her. She’s been here before. She knows how this ends. It’s already over. But she still hears the words coming out of her mouth. The denial. “ _No_.”

She grits her teeth, against the words, against what Hank is saying, against this idea that refuses to make sense, that clashes jaggedly with everything she understands about this world.

That rips _this_ world out from under her, too.

Alex isn’t coming home.

_She’s_ coming home, and Alex isn’t.

There’s a planet burning in her chest, crumbling in on itself. “No.” _God_ , can’t she just _stop whining_?

Her hands are shaking. There’s a shockwave running out in front of her. Her heat vision’s come back—everything directly beneath her gaze is literally going molten. There are people shouting, somewhere that may as well be another planet. People scrambling. The vehicle screeches to a halt, throwing her forward, since she’s not strapped in.

But it doesn’t matter now. Everything is burning.

_**“Kara Zor-El.”**  
_

Soft and close; deep in her bones, and permeating everything, through every surface around her. Metal, flesh, _earth_. It sounds familiar and unfamiliar at once. A face unmasked.

Max Lord. General Lane. Project Cadmus. A hundred—a thousand—lying faceless cowards in Washington DC, in cities around the world, who claim to hold life sacred, to have honor; who wear the mask of a servant—of peace, of _justice_ —faceless men who condemned Jeremiah to a half-life as an automaton, a never-ending experiment. Whose covert actions created and protected and supported those endless underground dissection labs. Living beings cut open like malfunctioning drones, like technology that can simply be reverse-engineered. In the name of _life_.

To make weapons to rule the world. And the worlds beyond this.

Who killed Alex.

**_“You have great rage.”_ **

In that voice, silence. Simplicity. _Purity_. Not the limited version of a species who have never even known the stars, though.

The way metal is purified; the way Krypton looked in its last days. Like a forge. Skin like a crucible, and then warping and cracking and peeling apart. Burning away the impurities.

She watches the red band from her dreams, from her _prison_ below the surface of Earth, sink down onto her finger. She doesn’t question how it got there; she knows it has an offer. That its intentions hum in sync with hers.

This stain on the universe, it promises, this stain must be burned clean. This is justice. The blue of her mother’s robes won’t do. The blue of Kal-El’s costume is nothing more than a doomed promise. The blue of Earth’s sky.

Walking beneath it with Alex.

She flexes her hand, staring. Krypton’s fire stares back.

_Burned clean._

And then she burns like she swallowed Rao itself.

**Author's Note:**

> Based kind of on the headcanon that Kara would in fact kill if she thought Alex was dead or in danger of dying. 
> 
> (In this AU, Alex *isn't* dead, but Kara doesn't know that, and that is in fact what makes this so wonderful. And also I'm fangirling over the idea of Green Lantern!Alex. Which would definitely be the follow-up to this piece. If I ever unbury myself from the pile of WIPs and prompts in my queue.)


End file.
